Fighting rages in eastern Ukraine as Zelensky warns of more Russian missile attacks

Moscow is searching for a symbolic victory in Ukraine’s east, while denying claims it is preparing to abandon a key nuclear power plant it has occupied since March.

A crew of the BM-21 'Grad' multiple rocket launcher prepares to fire towards Russian positions on the front line near Bakhmut. Picture: AFP

Fierce fighting rumbled on in east Ukraine, as Moscow denied Kyiv’s claims that Russia was preparing to abandon a nuclear-power plant in the country’s south that it has occupied since March.

In the eastern Donetsk region, Russia is struggling to seize the city of Bakhmut and achieve a symbolic victory after being on the back foot for months. Recent successful Ukrainian offensives have returned most of the northeastern Kharkiv region and the key southern regional capital of Kherson to Kyiv’s control.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Monday that Russia was preparing to transfer forces stationed in Belarus, near Ukraine’s northern border with Moscow’s ally, onto occupied Ukrainian territory to shore up units that have suffered losses while fighting to stall Ukraine’s advance.

Russia’s efforts to strengthen defences in occupied areas come as it continues to stutter in its military campaign, now more than nine months old. The head of Ukraine’s state nuclear-energy company Energoatom, Petro Kotin, said Sunday there were signs Russia might be preparing to abandon the Zaporizhzhia nuclear-power plant, Europe’s largest, which it seized in March.

A general view of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, amid the ongoing Russian military action in Ukraine. Picture: AFP

“In recent weeks we’ve been getting information that signs have appeared that they may be preparing to leave,” Mr Kotin said in an interview with Ukrainian television.

The Kremlin on Monday denied that there were any Russian preparations to vacate the territory of the plant, which Russia has heavily fortified with troops and armour and which has long been a target of regular shelling blamed by both sides on each other.

“There’s no point searching for signs where there are none and there can be none,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

On Monday evening, Ukraine’s Defence Ministry said on Telegram that Russian forces have started to forbid entry to plant workers who had refused to sign contracts with Rosatom, Moscow’s atomic-energy company. Ukraine’s forces, meanwhile, damaged a railway bridge near the settlement of Starobohdanivka in the Zaporizhzhia region that was used by Russia to deliver weapons and military equipment, the ministry said.

The city of Kherson, following its recent recapture by Ukraine after more than eight months of occupation, has come under regular artillery fire from Russian forces positioned across the Dnipro River. Authorities have managed to restore electricity in parts of the city after Russia destroyed infrastructure during its withdrawal, but critical services still aren’t fully back.

Scenes of jubilation earlier this month as Ukrainian troops entered Kherson have been replaced by panic over the intensifying bombardment. Authorities have organised an evacuation of residents, and a free train headed west leaves the city each evening at 6pm.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that the country was facing a difficult week amid the threat of further missile strikes by Russia aimed at disabling key infrastructure and sapping Ukrainians’ morale.

“They are capable of nothing but devastation,” Mr Zelensky said in his nightly address on Monday. “This is all they leave behind.”

Ukrainian troops fire upon Russian positions on the front line near Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. Picture: AFP

Ukrainian and Western officials have warned of a possible humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine as winter sets in and swaths of the country, including its largest cities, suffer from protracted power and water outages that often disable the heating system as temperatures begin to plummet.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Monday called the attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure “absolutely despicable” and said Russian President Vladimir Putin was attempting “to bring the Ukrainian people to their knees because he can’t bring the Ukrainian armed forces to its knees.”

A recently repaired pumping station in Kherson that delivers drinking water to Mykolaiv was damaged again in a Russian rocket attack, the spokesman for the Odessa regional military administration said Monday. Serhiy Bratchuk, writing on Telegram, said the city would be supplied with water from the Buzki estuary for an indefinite period.

Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine’s defence minister, on Monday wrote on Twitter that Russia had launched 16,000 missile attacks on Ukraine over the past nine months.

Ukraine has branded Russia a terrorist state for attacks that have killed civilians across the country and damaged thousands of residential buildings, and the European Parliament and the national parliaments of several countries have followed suit. Russia has denied targeting civilians and denounced the designation.

In Kyiv, authorities say they have opened more than 430 stations where people can warm up and charge devices, and plan to open 100 more. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in an interview with Ukrainian media published Monday that power outages would likely continue until the spring and an evacuation of some residents from the city might be necessary if the situation worsens.

In a show of support, the foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Iceland visited Kyiv on Monday.

“Despite Russia’s bomb rains and barbaric brutality Ukraine will win!” Latvia’s chief diplomat, Lithuania’s chief diplomat, Gabrielius Landsbergis, wrote on Twitter.

The Wall Street Journal